Chamber and committees

We discussed this possibility among many others at the planning stage for the UK Presidency of the Council of the European. There are no plans at present to hold a seminar on the implementation of Article 10.

The group will be chaired bythe Very Rev Graham Forbes, provost of St Mary’s Cathedral, Edinburgh. Amember from the UK Advisory Group on Hepatitis and a member from the UK Expert AdvisoryGroup on AIDS have been invited to be members of the group. Other nominees are beingsought from the Scottish Police Federation, UNISON, Rape Crisis Scotland, HIVScotland, the Equalities Coordinating Group, Health Protection Scotland, the ScottishHIV/AIDS Group, GMC Scotland and organisations representing Occupational Healthin the police service, the Prison Service and the NHS.

The group will be asked to considerand make recommendations on all aspects of the care and advice provided to thosewho face risks of blood-borne viral infection following an occupational or criminalincident, and the remit is therefore wider than the issues raised in the recentconsultation on Blood testing following criminal incidents where there is a riskof infection. The first meeting of the group is likely to be in August or September.

Unless at some time in the future an Act of the Scottish Parliament permits use of the identity card scheme and register in connection with devolved services, these service levels will be unaffected. In the case of the police, powers allowing the Secretary of State to disclose information from the register to Scottish chief constables should contribute to improved performance.

Scottish public bodies will only be able to receive information from the register when the Secretary of State exercises his powers – set out in the bill – to disclose information. Disclosure of information from the register is reserved.

If Scottish public bodies receive information from the register, the use to which they put that information will be subject to their existing powers and duties, including their responsibilities under the Data Protection Act. Such usage could be modified by an Act of the Scottish Parliament.

The Secretary of State has no current plans to use the powers in the bill to disclose information from the register to public authorities in Scotland other than the police.

The bill allows the Secretary of State to make provision in future for information from the national identity register to be disclosed to public authorities, including possibly public authorities in Scotland. It is for the Secretary of State to determine the circumstances in which he will disclose information from the reserved register. The Scottish Parliament could not legislate so as to require or prevent him from disclosing information from the register.

However, the use to which any disclosed information could be put would depend on the existing powers and duties of the bodies concerned. In devolved areas, an Act of the Scottish Parliament could make provision for the way in which information received from the Register is to be used for purposes connected with devolved policy areas.

The Scottish Executive liaises regularly with the Identity Cards Programme Team. Representatives from Public Service Reform and Efficiency Division and the General Register Office for Scotland have attended a workshop on the mechanics of how the ID Card Scheme might operate and a member of the ID Cards Programme Team has given two presentations to Senior Scottish Executive officials.

The Executive is represented on the Home Office Principal User Group and Strategy Board on Identity Cards. This has enabled the Scottish Executive to ensure that proposals under the Identity Cards Bill do not impact on Scottish devolved matters.

This is an operational matter for Scottish Enterprise.

As explained in the answer to S2W-16652, answered 31 May 2005, work on the directory will not be complete until January 2006. However, the data collection exercise has revealed that there are about 1,350 providers responsible for 7,000 services nationally. Within this total, it is estimated that housing support services specifically for older people are delivered by around 200 providers through 2,100 services. The vast majority of these services for older people are accommodation-based, typically amenity, sheltered and extra care housing settings. Of the remaining services 19,092 people, who were homeless or sleeping rough, received housing support during 2003-04.

All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/webapp/wa.search.

Following independent research, commissioned by the Executive in April 2003, on methodologies for data collection and also a pilot study, completed in April 2004, the Executive commissioned EAC to collect the necessary information and create a full database to support the directory. This work will be completed by October 2005, and the directory published in paper and web based format by January 2006.

The entitlement card programme with local authorities is designed to help ensure that citizens get access to all of the services that they are entitled to, and that access to those services is as convenient as possible. This includes the use of a citizen’s account, where, for example, citizens will be able to access services online, and the use of a citizen’s entitlement card to provide a wide range of card based services on one single card.

This is quite different from national UK identity cards as envisaged by the UK Government prior to the election.

The purposes of the identity cards bill as re-introduced at Westminster this week include proving and protecting identity, demonstrating the right to live and work in the UK and supporting the fight against various types of crime, all of which are matters reserved to Westminster. Some public services – such as social security services – would in time require use of identity cards to establish eligibility. The national identity register supporting identity cards would include information about a person’s nationality and immigration status, employment entitlement and biometric data.